The Federal Government has formally abandoned plans to introduce legislation for mandatory ISP filtering, closing a dark chapter in politics concerning Australia's internet.

However, confusingly, it does still want Australian Net feeds to be filtered:

Instead, internet service providers will be directed by the Government and the Australian Federal Police to block "child abuse websites" that feature on an INTERPOL block list.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said in a statement that "Australia's largest ISPs have been issued notices requiring them to block these illegal sites in accordance with their obligations under the Telecommunications Act 1997".

Most people would probably approve of blocking that particular class of sites, but there are some wider issues here. First, it's a little disingenuous of the Australian government to claim that it is dropping plans to censor the Internet, since it plainly still intends to do that, albeit in a specific area. As we know from experience elsewhere, once the apparatus of censorship is in place, there is always pressure to add sites unrelated to the original blocking list.

The other issue is whether this nominal climbdown was part of the plan all along. After all, it's a standard tactic to make totally outrageous initial demands so that anything less seems almost reasonable by comparison. Or perhaps this was Plan B: try to push through ISP filtering as Plan A, and if that fails, drop back to "limited" censorship.

Since it seems unlikely that those who fought against the general censorship plans will be able to muster much support for the idea of not blocking child abuse sites, the key question now is whether it will be possible to stop this approach turning into precisely the kind of ISP filtering that the Australian government claims to have abandoned.

Jonathan Dandrow has developed noPhoto, which renders the pix snapped by those revenue-generating robo-cams useless. The technology behind noPhoto is fairly simple. At the top of the gadget, which doubles as a license plate frame, there’s an optical flash trigger that detects the flash of the traffic-light camera. That trigger sets off one or both xenon flashes in the sides of the noPhoto, so when the traffic-light camera opens its shutter, there’s too much light and the picture of your license plate is overexposed. Big Brother can’t read your plate.

Some will argue that technology like this will only be used by scofflaws wishing to run red lights. But as the inventor points out, there's plenty of shady activity on the other side of the camera, not the least of which is some more erosion of civil liberties.

“I just had a lot of reservations about the cameras,” Dandrow says. “They are trying to circumvent the constitution.”

As Gary Biller, the president of the National Motorists Association, recently wrote in U.S. News and World Report, traffic-light cameras violate “several key tenets of a citizen’s due process rights,” because there is “no certifiable witness to the alleged violation,” and so therefore, “the defendant loses the right to cross-examine his accuser in court.”

The New Star-Ledger’s Bamboozled column has the story of a woman whose license was suspended by authorities in New Jersey for a red-light ticket, even though the car in the photo is clearly not hers — oh, and she hadn’t even been in the Garden State in more than a year when the violation occurred.

Despite having moved from New Jersey to Colorado 18 months before being ticketed, she still had to jump through a ridiculous number of hoops to clear her record and get her suspended license back. Starting with the city staff in Edison Township calling her a liar and a long game of paperwork tennis between the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission and the township, it finally reached the point where the driver realized it would be easier to pay the fees than travel 1800 miles for a court date. Appealing the ticket runs $75 plus fees and a personal appearance. The final breakdown? $200 to restore her license plus $81 for the ticket and $33 in court costs. $314 to clear a ticket issued to the wrong person.

Despite the obvious flaws in the "camera-as-cop" system, there's a very good chance Dandrow's noPhoto will be forced off the market before too long. There's already a law against obscured license plates. But will that hold when the license plate is only obscured when being photographed? The other angle will likely be "concern" about "safety," as if this bit of civil disobedience will lead to rampant red-light running. Will some people ignore red lights if they have this equipped? Sure, but I doubt they'll use it to drive through heavily-trafficked intersections against the lights. This will most likely result in a few more "California stops" at quiet intersections. If the cops don't like this, maybe they should consider the example they set when they flip the light bar on momentarily to blow through traffic signals.

If this disruption hastens the demise of the rightfully-maligned red light camera, so much the better. The cameras, which some municipalities adore for their money-making ability, have been linked to increased accidents and shady law enforcement activity, like issuing tickets signed by a deceased patrolman, lowering the yellow light time to increase the chance of violations, and lying about the length of a red light to hide the fact a bogus ticket had been issued. Fighting back against technology being used badly for lousy ends with a simple, effective solution is the best kind of disruption.

"The most surprising result for me is that the act of downloading from an unauthorized source seems to have peaked and is now declining. This is most likely due to the actions of the music industry, who have been successfully experimenting with new business models."

There you go, music industry! You're doing it right! It seems like everyone is winning in the Netherlands: illegal downloads decreasing, new business models (streaming, advertising) successfully competing with abundant free supply, and paying customers. In fact, the study shows that some two thirds of consumers are willing to pay around the current retail prices for content. I can't back this up, but it seems reasonable to suggest that this is the same amount of people who would have shelled out cash back in the day of optical discs, or CD's as those clumsy shiny discs used to be called. Remember all those thieving fans who proudly owned huge tape collections with self-decorated covers of the copied albums? If you don't, you must be younger than 25. However, not all is good news. Poort continues:

"The downloading of films and series from unauthorized sources is on the rise. This shows that enforcement is not the reason for decreased downloading of music, since successful enforcement would not only have an effect on music, but on all media offered by blocked websites, such as the Pirate Bay"

Note that ThePirateBay.org is blocked in the Netherlands, pending appeals in several cases. Poort elaborates:

"The reactions from consumers show clearly that the blockade of the Pirate Bay website is not relevant to about 75% of them. This is because they never downloaded from illegal sources anyway, or stopped downloading since legal services have taken off or they had enough money to pay for content. The other 25% seems fairly unaffected by the injunction. Only 5% have indicated they actually started downloading less, not a shockingly large effect to put it mildly."."

To say this is an interesting finding is an understatement of epic proportions. This finding gives decisive evidence that blocking access to websites, services or content distribution methods is a bogus way of addressing an innovating customer base. To repeat, but in more joyous terms: Hey Policymakers! Honorable Judges! Here's the evidence you've been waiting for! Ha, turns out that blocking websites is an ineffective way to change consumer behavior after all. Gosh, if only someone had predicted this before... Would've saved us all quite some hassle, right?!

Well then, now this is settled, time to focus all the wasted litigation and lobbying money for restrictive measures on R&D. The legal services are still in their infancy and have so much potential. The better they get; the more people will pull out their wallets to pay for access. You wouldn't want to be the only kid left behind who can't access all the great content made available through 4G network phones and super fast broadband by really easy to use services, would you?

Thinking about it this way, affordable, user-friendly and all encompassing services for music, films and books may even increase the paying user base from 67% to... 100%?! Maybe not quite 100%, but more research is needed for this new and possible social phenomenon of peer-pressure to pay for media and at the same time the reversal of the old media model: huge paying consumer bases for the cultural sector due to abundant and ubiquitous availability, instead of artificial scarcity and thriving "piracy". Record execs must be throwing money at their screens by now, reading about this not-quite-so-hypothetical but under-researched gap in the market.

Of course, we must not forget that part of the financing team is currently in appeal for a court ruling, which forced ISP's to block ThePirateBay.org. This blogger is happy to keep you updated of any developments in the already legendary Dutch copyright fisticuffs of 2012!

from the damned-if-you-do... dept

We've written a couple of times about Indian ISPs overblocking websites in response to vague court orders to try to prevent copyright infringement of a particular film. The responses seemed like massive overkill, such as blocking complete access to certain sites -- including sites like Vimeo -- that have perfectly legitimate reasons for existing. It seems that this overkill may be coming back to haunt some ISPs. Airtel has now been penalized by a Consumer Forum in India for going too far with its blocks. Airtel was ordered to pay one of its customers 20,000 rupees (or about $360) for "deficiency in Internet service, thereby causing mental anguish to the complaintant."

The order said that Airtel misinterpreted the original court order, and couldn't justify its actions by hiding behind it.

“By misinterpreting the Madras High Court order, Airtel blocked entire websites. It is needless to say that the company’s actions amount to deficiency in service as well as unfair trade practice,” said the forum.

Of course, the article goes on to note that there has been some confusion over what was originally asked to be blocked. The anti-piracy company, Copyright Labs, who asked for the block order, claimed that it had only asked for specific infringing URLs to be blocked, but a freedom of information request revealed that it had actually asked for blocking of entire websites.

All in all, this highlights some of the many problems that occur when you give copyright holders the power to order outright censorship. It's good to see some push-back. If other customers in India file similar complaints, perhaps ISPs will think twice before engaging in widespread censorship.

from the the-software-may-suck,-but... dept

We've heard all sorts of random stories about over-aggressive IT staffs or filters that block random websites for no good reason, but sometimes the situations are truly bizarre. For example, a friend sent over an announcement concerning a webinar from the DC District Court about the Electronic Case Filing (ECF) system. Obviously this is a useful thing for lawyers and law enforcement to understand. So it struck us as interesting to see the following tidbit in the emailed announcement:

SPECIAL NOTE TO DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE ATTORNEYS/STAFF:
The WebEx web conferencing website is not accessible to DOJ attorneys/staff due to internet blocks set in place by your IT department, therefore you are unable to register for a webinar training class or participate in the WebEx training room session itself. However, the option to participate in only the teleconference portion of the training class is available and will still prove useful.

Really, now? We've already had reasons to question the technical competence of the DOJ, but to do a complete block of all Webex webinars? Overkill much?

from the censorship-is-bad,-mmmkay? dept

Reminiscent of the mooo.com screwup in the US, where Homeland Security's ICE division "accidentally" seized 84,000 sites and plastered them over with a warning graphic about how they'd been seized by the US government for child porn, the Danish police similarly "accidentally" had 8,000 legitimate sites declared as child porn sites that needed to be blocked. Among the sites listed? Google and Facebook. Visitors to those sites, from ISP Siminn were greeted with the following message (translated, of course):

The National High Tech Crime Center of the Danish National Police [NITEC], who assist in investigations into crime on the internet, has informed Siminn Denmark A/S, that the internet page which your browser has tried to get in contact with may contain material which could be regarded as child pornography...

Upon the request of The National High Tech Crime Center of the Danish National Police, Siminn Denmark A/S has blocked the access to the internet page.

And people wonder why so many people around the world were so concerned about the threat of something like SOPA -- which would make DNS blocking at the ISP level a lot more common.

So how did this "accident" happen?

According to NITEC chief Johnny Lundberg, it began when an employee at the police center decided to move from his own computer to that of a colleague.

“He sat down and was about to make an investigation, and in doing so he placed a list of legitimate sites in the wrong folder,” Lundberg explained. “Before becoming aware of the error, two ISPs retrieved the list of sites.”

It would seem that there's a problem in this process. The fact that just one employee can change the list seems wide open to abuse. And the fact that the list seems somewhat automated beyond that is even more problematic. You know what would solve this problem? A little thing called due process. What a concept.

The Irish Minister for Research and Innovation, Sean Sherlock, is insisting that the final version of the bill is much more limited than earlier proposals, and that it took guidance from recent EU Court of Justice rulings that say ISPs shouldn't have to be proactive about blocking. That still means that copyright holders can petition to force ISPs to block all access to various websites, and as we've seen in other countries in Europe, you can bet that the major record labels and studios will be doing just that very soon (if they haven't already) -- though their track record on properly calling out infringement isn't very good.

Sherlock, apparently realizing just how bad this looks to the citizenry, is trying to balance this announcement out by also saying that he's launching the "next stage" of the process to review copyright in Ireland, with the goal of "removing barriers to innovation." This is an ongoing process that we first wrote about last year, when the country realized that existing copyright law was holding back innovation.

Of course, the end result is that the government appears to be trying to move in two different directions at once. On the one hand, it's catering to the legacy entertainment industry interests and hindering the internet as the platform that enables new business models... while at the same time paying lip service to how it has to increase such innovation. Here's a tip: the first thing towards increasing innovation in business models online is not putting misplaced liability on service providers, not setting up a censorship regime, and not removing the incentives for the entertainment industry to actually embrace innovative business models.

from the and-people-will-magically-start-buying! dept

Now that the UK has decided its fine and dandy to censor websites because they might help someone somewhere find some infringing content, they continue to try to broaden that censorship ability. The latest target, not surprisingly, is The Pirate Bay, who is likely to be blocked following a ruling that slams the site for failing to make any efforts to stop infringement (though, it's not clear why it's TPB's responsibility to fix the entertainment industry's broken business model).

The full ruling is an interesting read, though it notes that no one from TPB was there to defend the site. It also appears to get basic facts wrong -- on information that is widely, publicly available, such as in claiming that Carl Lunstrom was an "operator" for the site. He was not. That said, it seems totally pointless to block TPB, because the site can (and will) spring up with its entire same contents on another domain (or many, many domains) minutes after such a block is in place. It's not just a game of wac-a-mole, it's encouraging more moles and more holes. It makes you wonder what the point of this really would be.

from the which-one-is-more-reasonable dept

It's been a bit hard to understand what's been going on in the UK concerning copyright reform when we keep hearing two very contradictory messages. On one side, there's the ridiculous Digital Economy Act, which was proposed by the unelected, debated by the ignorant and voted on by the absent in order to put in place much stricter copyright laws, including putting much of the burden on online service providers. That process is continuing to expand with plans to make the censorship part of the bill even clearer. Those behind the law, when pressed, admitted that they had absolutely no evidence to support the claimed need for this law.

And yet, while all of this was happening, there was also the Hargreaves Report, which was a very reasonable look at copyright issues, which listed out a bunch of pretty tame recommendations (so tame that creating a "fair use" policy was seen as too controversial). Of course, it also was pretty clear that the UK should stop its faith-based copyright regulating, and no more changes should be made to the laws without solid economic evidence.

So guess which process is getting attacked? You guessed it. The latter process, as Member of Parliament (MP) Peter Wishart apparently went on the attack against the Hargreaves report and the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) that commissioned it. Peter Bradwell, over at the Open Rights Group, hits back by noting that it's pretty ridiculous to question the IPO while ignoring everything going on with the Digital Economy Act, which came out of a different part of the goverment: the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Bradwell's article breaks down the differences here:

So to caricature the two departments: one is asking for evidence and consulting widely and openly. One has spent the past few years consulting narrowly, opaquely, and with no evidence or analysis to speak of.

The IPO come under fire in Peter Wishart's speech for being sloppy with evidence and ignoring the creative industries. DCMS' proposals are to be 'got on with'. He calls the IPO 'a bureaucratic front to devalue the people whom it is supposed to support' which the Government must 'get to grips with'.

That is slightly strange. The issue of policy making for copyright involves managing a complex mix of evidence, principle and opinion. Disagreement, and the management and channeling of that disagreement in the formulation of policy, are two separate things. Whatever position one takes on the substance of this debate about IP, there is a right way and a wrong way to make public policy. It has to be democratically legitimate, open, transparent and involve proper debate. Over the past 12 months, the IPO has beaten DCMS hands down on that metric.

Yeah, but being open, transparent and relying on actual evidence isn't just hard work -- the big content gatekeepers don't like it when that happens. And we have to support them at all costs, apparently...

from the misinformation-works dept

We already walked through the ridiculousness of RIAA boss Cary Sherman claiming that the reason SOPA/PIPA were defeated was because of a "misinformation" campaign on the part of some tech companies. Tons of folks who have followed the RIAA for years probably broke out in open laughter when we saw this statement from Sherman:

Misinformation may be a dirty trick, but it works.

Because, if anyone knows that "misinformation works," it's Cary Sherman, who is famous for his ability to run vast misinformation campaigns to get bills passed. Thankfully, Ernest Falcon, over at Public Knowledge decided that if Sherman wanted to open the door to discussing "misinformation campaigns" concerning SOPA/PIPA, we might as well focus on the biggest one of all: the claims by the MPAA and RIAA that DNS blocking was no big deal:

During
the legislative hearing on SOPA, House Homeland Security Subcommittee Chairman on
Cybersecurity Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) questioned MPAA Exec. Vice President
Michael O’Leary about the cybersecurity problem. In response he received the standard
misinformation campaign line of there was no cybersecurity problem and that
this type of activity “occurred all the time.” To bolster their
misinformation campaign, the content lobby worked hard to manufacture
the “truth” by highlighting the work of the very small number
of individuals (a grand total of three) who wrote “technical rebuttals.” These were not so much rebuttals as they were
well
orchestrated advocacy pieces that ignored the engineering and distorted
the studies they utilized in order to dupe Members of Congress to
believe the legitimate concerns were in fact unsupported.

Part
of the RIAA and MPAA misinformation campaign centered on the argument that DNS
filtering and secure networks (DNSSEC) could both exist in the same
network. This was despite the fact that top experts in the field provided an extensive
explanation why that would not be technologically possible (a couple of these
individuals actually saved the Internet in the past).
In the end, when Comcast (a SOPA supporter) announced they had to shut
down anything that filters DNS traffic when they activated DNSSEC and the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator stated that the bills “pose a
real risk to cybersecurity,” the jig was up.

Lastly,
claiming that censorship concerns in regards to DNS filtering were misplaced
completely ignores the fact that SOPA and PIPA moved America closer to censorship
oriented regimes. If these bills were enacted into law, American
broadband providers would have been required to install the same filtering
technology used in China, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Armenia, Ethiopia, Saudi
Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Burma (Myanmar), Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and
Vietnam. This reality triggered the outpouring of opposition from the international human rights community who fight censorship overseas
every day and point to the United States as the model. Summing up the
well informed reasoning behind their opposition, Julian
Sanchez with the Cato Institute points out that enacting SOPA
and PIPA would mean the “only difference between﻿ the Unites States and China is what's on the blacklist.”

Part of the RIAA's favorite tactics is to pull out all the dirty tricks in the book... and any time people call them on it, to accuse the other side of using the dirty tricks that were really being used by the RIAA. It's a classic DC-insider move, but in this day and age, where the internet can route around lies, it's going to backfire, as it did here. All you have to do is look at the comments on the original Sherman NY Times piece, where upwards of 90% of the comments call Sherman out for his ridiculous claims. Sherman has the old playbook, the one where those who knew the truth couldn't speak back. If he had paid attention at all to what happened in the SOPA/PIPA debate he would have know that playbook doesn't work any more. But, it's all he knows. If the major labels were smart (don't laugh), they'd dump Sherman and put someone in place who actually gets the internet.